Any time low temperature heat is added to a living organism, such as the human body, as it is being treated for cancer with radiation and/or chemotherapy, the efficacy of the cancer treatment is substantially increased. The difficulty with this process has been in “adding heat” to only the cancerous region that is being treated, in a precisely controlled manner.
One prior cancer treatment method sought to place the entire living organism in a hot water wrap which often caused severe side effects, including death, since the control of the patient's body temperature is not precise. This cancer treatment method often caused conditions similar to heat shock or heat stroke, since the living organism is unable to adequately remove the applied heat to maintain a safe body temperature.
Another cancer treatment approach, called regional hyperthermia, uses microwave energy, applied to the living organism from an external source, to heat the tissue. This approach relies on the fact that tissue is largely composed of water, which is dipolar in nature and heats as the water molecules “physically flip” in concert with the applied alternating current magnetic field. This “flip” causes molecular friction, hence heat. However, the microwave heating of tissue causes hot spots and burns (as do microwave ovens). In addition, it is virtually impossible to direct the microwave energy to only heat the tissue of interest and surrounding non-cancerous tissue is therefore also heated, sometimes to a burning level. Studies have shown patients can receive 2nd degree and 3rd degree burns from a microwave heating approach.
A third cancer treatment approach uses an “antenna,” such as a monopole, which is inserted via a catheter inside the body cavity to be heated. As before, severe hot spots and burns can result from the non-uniform application of electromagnetic fields (at microwave frequencies) which has unintended damaging effects.
All of the cancer treatment methods embodied in the present prior art have significant deficiencies in terms of patient safety, treatment efficacy and cost. In addition, in the United States, the only approved procedure for the treatment of bladder cancer in humans is a pure chemotherapy-based approach, without any heating of the bladder tissue or the chemotherapy medicine, to stress and help kill remaining cancer cells. Other approaches, such as using microwave heating applied to the body from a source located outside the body, are only in experimental, pre-clinical studies. The catheter-based approach is only approved for use in certain European countries.
Thus, the present set of bladder cancer treatment methods can be characterized as:                Chemotherapy without hyperthermia—minimal effectiveness.        Radiation without hyperthermia—minimal effectiveness.        Chemotherapy with microwave heating of bladder tissue causes burns, non-uniform heating, hot spots, cold spots, patient pain, patient discomfort, and inadvertently heats non-bladder tissue.        Chemotherapy with catheter-based radio frequency heating inside the bladder space via a small antenna causes burns, non-uniform heating, hot spots, cold spots, patient pain and patient discomfort.        
Circulating chemotherapy fluids without a catheter-based system won't work because of the physical size of the urethra, non-uniform thermodynamics (one cannot only remove “cold” fluid and replace it with “warm” fluid), re-circulating chemotherapy agents thru the urethra is caustic and very damaging, the urethra can be easily damaged by large physical objects inserted into it and lastly, the chemotherapy agent (such as Mitomycin C) is very expensive. All of this increases the volume of Mitomycin C required to ensure that the chemotherapy agent concentration is uniform in the total circulated volume of fluid (upwards of 4 to 5 times the nominal amount of Mitomycin C is necessary if circulated fluids are used).